I did some scribblings after some scaremongering headline about 40000+ supposedly died after 'having both their ice creams'
and came up with figures that actually there should have been 80000+ regardless of ice cream status.
Anyway by the time I got round to doing it the thread had moved on several pages so I left it...
But now reminded, and it's relevant all over again, hurrah!
US 330 million population, roughly 80% eligible for that particular event gives 264 million.
Ice cream rate of 500k to 1 million per day, call it 750k, gives 10,500,000 within 14 days of it at any one time, so about 4% of the population.
US death rate, around 7800 per day, over 14 days is 109200.
4% of 109200 is 4368.
Multiply that by the number of 14-day periods since the start and that's how many total you would expect to have died within any 14 day period regardless of any special event.
So e.g. Jan to beginning of Oct, say 40 weeks, 20 fortnights, expected deaths 4368x20 gives
87360 expected deaths from that rolling 10-million-ish without anything in particular needing to happen but I'd have to check what period the 'shock revelation' was meant to cover as I'm sure the touted figure was a lot lower than that.
Based on scribblings and assumptions so E&OE, especially if my logic is wrong, though this is more about general scale than trying to be exact.
Polite corrections appreciated, please show your working and better yet also point to where mine went wrong
(edit : looks like the 7800 was a bit high, though even taking that down to 7600 or even lower makes no difference to the point made)